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On Sunday, 25
October 2009, at around 10 p.m. a student of B. Sc. Final Year
Chemistry was reported to have been killed at an eatery near the
Aligarh railway station; quite painful, bitter and highly
unfortunate. This, reportedly, was an unexpected outcome of a minor
altercation on seemingly inconsequential fracas over mobike parking.
Since the mishap took place outside the campus and the alleged
killer was not an employee/ student of the AMU, there is, I
think, absolutely no justification for the agitating students to
demand the resignations of the VC and some of his high
functionaries. Aren't they asking for moon? The agitation should be
directed more against the provincial govt.’s administration to nab
the killer. The AMUTA is said to have demanded compensatory
amount and a job for the next kin of the killed; this again has to
be taken up with the UP govt, rather than with the AMU
administration.. May I appeal to the angry agitating students to
take note of these nuances? They should be able to see through the
dangerous politics of dark-room manipulators.

At the most,
the AMU administration could be faulted on neglecting the
canteen-infrastructure and one may demand that the AMU
administration should take steps towards establishing some (not one)
well provisioned canteens, like the ones on the JNU campus. This
particular “demand” has been raised by many including Prof. Mushirul
Hasan in his column in the Indian Express after the September
2007 upsurge. Should we still hope that the AMU will, at least now,
learn a lesson and will do the needful soon?

But, even
after the killer being arrested by the police, why do we witness
such a highly misguided student “activism”, disrupting all
academic activities when the semester exams of most of the courses
are about to be held in early December? Is it being engineered by
the desperate detractors of the VC? About AMU, it is often said that
the student upsurges are invariably engineered/sustained by some
“lobbies” to incapacitate the VC, who will in turn depend upon these
lobbies, who will consequently extract favours of lucrative/
powerful positions of academic administration, promotion, contracts/
kickbacks etc. Is it really true? If yes, then the needles of
suspicion could well be pointed not only on the hitherto ‘known’
detractors but also on the loyalists of the VC.

Already there
are speculations rife in the campus about who are the professors
fixing their eyes on the posts of Pro-VC, and Directors of the
proposed “off-campuses”. In my essay, “AMU Crisis: Some Questions
from an Insider” (Milli Gazette, 1-15 Nov 2007; also
circulated on the alumni group mails) I had raised many such
questions which are still relevant. Presumably, in response to my
questions, though with inordinate delay, Justice Faizanuddin Enquiry
was to be constituted to enquire into the crises of April-September
2007, so that the actors behind the machinations (if any) could be
exposed and punished. That it proved to be a non-starter, for
whatever reasons/ justifications is known to all. And therefore,
upsurges keep visiting us? Should the tainted people be given
administrative assignments? Can we have peace without justice?

Particularly
when the agitation is headed towards a wrong path, a teacher may
calm down such agitated mob of students only if s/he is equipped
with knowledge, morality and compassion. Are we, the
teachers, deficient in these three academic quotients? Why do the
students and the world at large assume/ believe that we indulge in
corruption while discharging the academic administration? What have
we done to dispel such (mis)conceptions?

For the reasons
of propriety and expediency, a small creature like me doesn’t have
the audacity of saying things in more words than these. But kindly
allow me to narrate a history of student violence in AMU in April
1965. Can we really draw a parallel between the two pages of
history i.e. April 1965 and Sept’07/Oct’09? [Let us assume, for
an analytical convenience, that the Oct’09 upsurge is an extension
of the upsurge of Sept’07].

Just as the
September’07 upsurge was not enquired by the Justice Faizanuddin,
the murderous assault on Ali Yavar Jung, the then VC-AMU, on 18
April 1965, was not enquired by a judicial enquiry. The 1965 upsurge
was also preceded by an expose (official enquiry 1961) of corruption
and financial irregularities in the AMU administration (Link,
26 August 1962). [One does not know whether the then VC really
punished the scamsters indicted by the official enquiry 1961, much
like shelving the Justice Mathew Report]. Ever since that expose of
1961, the violence of 1965 was, sort of, in the making. Factional
feuds, clustering around two professors, for VC-ship and over the
issue of appointments were developing like a menace. The immediate
precipitant of the 1965 fracas, however, was the decision of
reducing the “internal” quota of admissions from 75% to 50%, which
‘touched the raw nerve of the Muslims’. The then Pro-VC was among
the suspects for having engineered the attack on the VC.[Theodre P.
Wright Jr, 1966]

The then
Education Minister, M.C. Chagla (an ex-Muslim Leaguer turned
ultra-secularist) played a politics which heavily impacted the
‘minority character’ of AMU. Chagla through the Union Cabinet, got
suspended the AMU constitution, passed an ordinance through which
the religious composition of the members of the Executive Council
was changed drastically. Unscrupulous political meddling took the
tall of academic freedom and autonomy. Chagla’s intention was to
take away the teachers’ representation in the EC (Times of India,
21 May 1965), and he did succeed, as the number of the communists
and non-Muslim members in the AMU Court and EC went high
exponentially (Link, Oct. 29, 1961; Radiance, Sept 12,
1965). Only teacher to remain an EC member was Dr S. Husain Zaheer.
In fact, it was this kind of official patronage, rather than
ideological stridency and ground-activism, which imposed Left
‘hegemony’ on the decision making bodies of AMU in the 1960s.

The Chagla’s
politics was vehemently opposed by the Bihar’s renowned nationalist
Dr. Syed Mahmud’s newly formed All India Muslim Majlis
Mashaweraat (AIMMM). In June 1965, the AIMMM and JIH put a
charter of 6 demands before the Union govt, on Friday 16 July 1965,
“Save AMU Campaign” was launched, and in August 1965 the AIMMM and
its Dr Syed Mahmud, disappointed with the moderate politics on the
issue, talked of non violent satyagraha techniques which fell
on the deaf ears of the Union govt. Fissures within the
ideologically incongruous components of the AIMMM, personal clashes
within the leadership of the Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind (JUH) and
the conflicts between the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind (JIH) and
JUH put an adverse impact on the struggle for AMU’s minority
character. The Indo-Pak war of August 1965 created a kind of
situation in which Chagla could play his (dirty?) games more easily,
all in the farcical names of communal harmony, national unity etc..
He even went on to say that the “communal and reactionary” elements
plotted to kill the “nationalist and secular” VC. (Times of India,
June 3, 1965). And a minor official in the Union Ministry of
Education issued a press note (ostensibly to justify the suspension
of the AMU constitution) that the AMU was producing graduate
engineers and doctors to export to Pakistan. The fact is that the
first batch of medical graduates was yet to pass out from the newly
founded JNMCH. Chagla’s politics ‘smothered all democratizing
amendments’ in the AMU statutes. The AMU (Amendment) Act of 1961
(sic) was the outcome, resented by the Aligs, and huge
majority of the community, except the AMU’s Leftists, the
camp-followers and beneficiaries of Chagla’s patronage. The journey
(1965-1981) of AMU in quest of its minority character has been too
arduous and incomplete (Violette Graff, 1990).

Once again, we
are locked in factional feuds, battles (for self-promotion?) and
upsurges while the AMU’s minority character is sub-judice
before a larger bench of the Supreme Court of India. Few more words
in elaboration would have been more helpful, but as I said, I have
my own limitations. Discerning readers can easily make out what is
being left unsaid.

Gila hai
shauq ko dil mein bhi tangi-e-jaa ka

Guhar mein
mehva’ hua izteraab darya ka

(Ghalib)

Dr Mohammad
Sajjad is Asstt. Prof. (Lecturer)
Centre of Advanced Study in History
Aligarh Muslim University

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